Astonishingly Huge Update! XO 1.45

Welcome to 1.45, our biggest update yet!

TRACTOR BEAMS:

All ships can now equip a tractor beam. Tractors use lots of fuel and can be temporarily disabled by ion torpedoes. Tractors have a lot of uses:

• Tractor beams, as you might expect, hold ships in place. If a ship is disabled, tractoring it will keep it from being lost in the atmosphere of a planet. You can even grab things that are already beyond the point of no return and move them to a safe zone for further recovery operations. And if the tractoring ship moves, the held ship should also come along.

• Tractors can rescue ships, cargo and shuttles that have fallen deep into a planet’s gravity well

• If a tractor beam has sufficient power, active ships can be held, preventing any movement. If a tractor lacks sufficient power, the object will be slowed. Since tractor beams have the longest range of any weapon, this can be used as a purely defensive strategy by holding an attacker out of range.

• With enough tractor power, a ship can be pushed into a planet’s atmosphere and held there, causing damage!

• Multiple tractor beams can be combined to slow, stop or move an incoming enemy.

• Tractor beams can be set to Autotractor mode, which will automatically pull in any cargo containers and lifeboats within range. Disabled ships and boarding shuttles have to be manually tractored, because they do present a danger.

• Tractors can be set to Autorepulse. In this mode they automatically push enemy ships (including Reapers), boarding shuttles, mines, (and soon asteroids and comets!) away from your ship. Entering minefields just got a lot easier!

• Ships will autorepulse other ships in formation that are being attacked (if in range)

• You must choose between autorepulse, autotractor, or manual tractoring.

• Disabled ships are not autotractored; use a Tractor Retrieve action instead. Tractor Retrieve can be used on a disabled or abandoned ship, which automatically pulls the ship in for a transfer, allowing you to cherry pick what to bring over from the wreck.

• Tractors do not hold ships through jump, but if a tractor beam is equipped on a ship that can seize, the Tractor Seize command will tractor in a seizable target and then automatically seize it which will hold it through jump.

• Enemy boarding shuttles that are retrieved by a tractor will face a boarding action; it’s because of this that boarding shuttles are not autotractored.

PRECISE POSITIONING:

All movement commands now give you the ability to precisely choose where the ship will position itself with respect to the target.

Hold down the CTRL key while left clicking any movement order such as Attack, Follow, Support, Protect, Nuke, etc. to enable precise positioning.

This also works with multiple ships and formations.

NEW SHIPS:

The Irenic Argosy is the Irenic ship of plenty, capable of manufacturing Intoxicants and Snacks that can be sold at any trade location for a handsome profit.

The Pact Armored Refueler or ARF is a smaller tanker that can also package spare fuel into cargo containers for rapid resupply in combat or sale at trade outposts. As its name indicates, this ship is also lightly armored. Good doggie.

MAINTENANCE AND CANNIBALIZING SHIPS:

Dealing with ships that have been forced way past their normal operating limits has always been part of XO. This used to be totally random, and not very fair as pointed out by